


Bad Guy

by Anonymous



Series: Stuff that I write as Anonymous [3]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Good Girls AU, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-24 05:13:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19716922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: But maybe this is where it really starts:Steve robs the cash vault at Starcourt Mall and doesn’t get caught.By the police, that is.





	Bad Guy

**Author's Note:**

> So it's been a while since I wrote Build It Better, and I'm not really in this fandom, but turns out I had this little one-shot in my head that just had to come out. Fair warning, this is very far removed from Build It Better. It's a Good Girls au, which I'm obsessed with right now, and you don't really need to have seen Good Girls, but some things will probably make a little more sense if you have. Regardless, I hope you all like it.
> 
> Also, like pretty much ignore all of ST season 3.
> 
> Also, very very hand-wavy about that mall cash vault. Let's just pretend that's something that would have been a thing. I don't know, guys. Just go with it

Here’s how it starts:

Steve needs cash and a lot of it. It all happens at once, it feels like, but he realises in retrospect that it was already happening when he’d been too busy running around town after Dustin and the party and fucking Demogorgons.

Joyce gets sick, is the thing. Like, really sick. And then he finds out about Mrs Henderson and a series of bad investments that means she’s deep in the red and that Dustin might lose his childhood home, and then there is the fact that Steve’s parents have cut him off. Completely.

So between hospital bills and three mortgages and trying to save enough dollars just to put food in his fridge, Steve needs money.

And it’s not like it’s his responsibility, really. But it’s _Joyce_ and _Dustin_ and Steve is not about to let them suffer if he can help it. Dustin doesn’t know yet how bad it is, how much money trouble his mom is in, and Joyce would straight up kill Steve if she even had an inkling of what Steve plans to do, but she’s been more of a mom to Steve this last year than Steve’s mother has been his entire life, and she can’t afford the treatments she desperately needs, the treatments she hasn’t even mentioned to anyone but Steve because she doesn’t want to worry them—and that’s only because Steve had found her hacking up what seemed like half of her lung a month or so ago and she’d had no choice but to tell.

So yeah. Steve needs money, and he needs it fast.

But maybe this is where it really starts:

Steve robs the cash vault at Starcourt Mall and doesn’t get caught.

By the police, that is.

It had been Robin’s idea, detailing how easy it’d be to get to the cash—“There’s barely _any_ security, and they still haven’t installed all those cameras they’ve been talking about”—and she’s joking, obviously, but her plan is good and Steve is listening.

Seriously listening.

(She’s right, by the way. It _is_ easy.)

Or maybe that’s not where it starts at all. Maybe it’s after, when Billy surprises him in his own kitchen a couple of weeks later, already there when Steve walks in with his groceries, dropping the bags to the floor as he shouts out in shock.

An apple falls out of one of the bags, rolling across the floor until it stops by Billy’s feet, and he smirks as he bends to pick it up, biting into it with relish as he nods at a pair of tall, mean-looking guys—all the encouragement they need, apparently, before they start trashing the place while Steve looks on, frozen and horrified and thinking he’s going to die right here, in his own home because he’d robbed the cash vault at the mall but turns out that it’s _Billy’s_ money, is Billy’s business he’s disrupted, and Steve is so taken aback by it all that he barely even has the presence of mind to spare a thought to the utter bizarre reality his life has become.

In which Billy Hargrove is a mafia boss or a criminal mastermind or _something_.

Even Demogorgons had been easier to swallow than this.

Steve hasn’t even been aware that there is a criminal underworld in Hawkins. Definitely hasn’t been aware that money laundering is a big thing driving the black economy right now and that Billy is not only manufacturing fake money, but laundering it through the mall. If Steve hadn’t had a gun pressed to the side of his neck by henchman #1, watching Billy Hargrove sit at his dining table, idly flicking through a magazine while henchman #2 keeps trashing the place, Steve might have laughed at the idea of it.

But here he is, helplessly watching as his home is destroyed so it’ll look like a home invasion gone wrong when they shoot him dead.

“You’re making a mistake, you know.”

Billy looks up at that, and he’s almost been indifferent about the whole thing, from explaining that the thirty grand Steve had cleared off the cash vault was _Billy’s_ money, to sitting idly by as one man tears the place apart while another holds a gun to Steve, just waiting for the go ahead to pull the trigger.

“You shouldn’t kill me,” Steve continues, and it’s not a plea for them _not_ to kill him. Somehow that feels important, impressive in a way, that he’s not grovelling for his life.

Billy must think so too, because he finally looks interested in the proceedings. He eyes Steve for a long, drawn out moment, head tilted in consideration. “Is that so?” he asks, and Steve hates the way his stomach clenches at the slow drawl of the vowels, something more than fear racing up and down his spine.

(Something a lot like _excitement_.)

“I took your money, fine, whatever, and yeah, most of it is gone now. But if you think to kill me for it, then you are not the clever genius you think you are.” And maybe Steve is being too belligerent, too mocking and too stupid, but he has Billy’s attention and that’s all he needs.

Billy’s face is blank, giving nothing away, and he’s a man now—a young one, true, but still more man than boy—and it’s so far removed from the hot-headed, impulsive _teenager_ Steve thought he’d known that for a second, he’s afraid he’s made a horrible mistake.

He swallows painfully, nearly choking on an inhale when he feels the barrel of the gun press a little harder against his neck.

A second ticks by, another, and Steve thinks he’s really going to do it, Billy is going to nod his head and henchman #1 is going to pull the trigger, and god, _Dustin_ is going to be the one to have to clean up the blood, who’s going to find Steve’s body because there is no one else, not really, and—

“All right,” Billy says, “enlighten me.”

“You said it yourself,” Steve breathes out in a rush, desperately reaching for the first thing that comes to mind, because Billy looks intrigued—barely, but it’s _there_ —and maybe Steve can talk himself out of this after all, maybe he doesn’t have to die _tonight._ “I’m not some random homeless person no one is going to give two shits about if someone finds him in a dumpster somewhere. I’m a pretty boy, that’s what _you_ said, with friends and a family that loves me, who’ll _miss_ me. And if you kill me, people will care. The _police_ will care.” And maybe it’s not the whole truth, or it is, but it’s the truth stretched out, because Steve really doesn’t have much in the way of family anymore beyond a set of parents who don’t love him but are obliged to pretend to for societal conventions. What he does have is Dustin and the party, and Joyce and Hopper, and even Robin and Nancy and Jonathan and that’s enough. It has to be enough.

“I’m betting you don’t want the kind of attention that’s going to drum up, the poor pretty boy shot dead in his own home.”

Steve lifts his head up defiantly despite the gun against his neck as he makes his point, eyes holding Billy’s gaze—stubborn, always so foolishly stubborn. He holds his breath while he waits, daring Billy to tell him he’s wrong because _Billy_ is the one who’d called Steve _pretty boy_ all those months ago.

The room is silent for a moment, the tension all but crackling in the air, but then Billy chuckles, and Steve can finally breathe again when henchman #1 lowers the gun and takes a step back at Billy’s subtle shake of his head.

“All right, pretty boy,” Billy drawls out, mocking now. He stands, tugging his denim jacket into place as he saunters up to Steve. He’s shorter than Steve by at least a couple of inches, but he’s broader in the shoulders and torso, made up of several more pounds of muscle, and it’s hard to remember the height difference when the way Billy carries himself makes him seem larger than life. He leans into Steve’s space, lifting his right hand to trace the pad of his little finger gently, so gently, down Steve’s forehead across his cheek, pushing a stray lock of hair away from his face in the process. “But you stole thirty grand from me, and I’m gonna need it back, yeah? How do you propose you solve that little problem, hm?”

Steve closes his eyes, hardly able to think straight with the adrenaline coursing through him. With Billy standing so close. “I’ll get it back,” he swears, a promise they both know is a lie because how could he? It’s _thirty grand_.

Billy chuckles again, and when Steve’s eyes flutter open, he smiles, filthy. “Yes, you will,” he says, and the hand that’s been stroking down Steve’s face is suddenly in his hair, fingers gripping tight. “Or else you and I are gonna have a problem, and I’m not liable to keep it between the two of us, do you understand me? Would be a shame for some awful accident to happen to someone you love. But you know how these things go, right? Fate’s a bitch and all.”

Steve swallows, sees it play out in his mind, the different _accidents_ that could befall anyone— _Dustin_ —and he nods against the painful tug of his hair. “I understand. I’ll get it all back, I promise.”

“Good,” Billy says, stepping back from Steve, finally. He doesn’t leave immediately, but takes a minute, Steve holding himself still as Billy lets his eyes flicker across the planes of Steve’s face intently, lingering on Steve’s parted mouth and he smirks again, looking more like the Billy that Steve remembers than this new version of him he doesn’t recognise.

A version of him who is more than a little dangerous.

“You get a month. I’m feeling…generous,” Billy says, “ _pretty boy._ ” And those two words sit heavy between them now. Something pointed and meaningful, and Steve wants to scream from it all.

Wants to rage against Billy and the circumstances that led him to this moment in the first place.

Steve breathes in deep, nostrils flaring, and holds it all back.

Billy stares at him for a few seconds more, and then he laughs. As if he knows exactly what Steve is thinking.

It’s not a particularly kind laugh.

“A month, pretty boy,” Billy repeats, and then he’s gone, his lackeys trailing after him without a word.

Steve stares after them, waits until he hears the click of the door being shut behind them and then he collapses to the floor in a heap of tangled limbs and tearful eyes.

“ _Fuck_.”


End file.
